Dan Greenberg is a teacher in Ohio and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. He teaches high school English in Sylvania, in the northwest of the state.
Here he writes about the power of teachers, who are trusted by parents and the community to refute slanders about their schools.
He writes:
About a week before the November 2nd election, a colleague of mine sent me a picture of a campaign literature piece supporting candidates for school board in my community.
“Kids and Taxpayers FIRST! Keep ‘Woke’ politics out of our classrooms.”
The postcard was paid for by the NW Ohio Coalition for Public School Excellence, a group that was not only supporting conservative candidates in my community, but a neighboring community, with the exact same yard signs just different names.
Not to be outdone, the Northwest Ohio Conservative Coalition blanketed voters in my school district with robo-call messages telling voters to support the conservative candidates and “…keep woke politics out of the classroom.” The calls seem to go out indiscriminately; even the President of Democratic Club in my community received one.
These campaign tactics, filled with lies about schools teaching Critical Race Theory, had an interesting impact. I don’t know how much they motivated conservatives to head to the polls, but the group I saw them motivate most was the teachers. At a time when teachers are emotionally and physically exhausted, when they seem to be focused on making it through one day at a time, these campaign lies seemed to tap some reserve of strength and energy teachers did not know they had. Teachers started posting to social media, pushing back on the CRT lies. They started posting images of the four teacher union-endorsed candidates on their Facebook pages. They sent text messages to friends and family with the names of the teacher-endorsed candidates. One teacher even wrote a message across the entire back window of her van (in excellent teacher handwriting) telling community members to support teachers by voting for our endorsed candidates.
On November 2nd, as results came in the teacher-supported candidates were leading, and in the end, the four candidates in the two districts who were coming to the school boards with a priority of taking on “Woke politics” and Critical Race Theory lost.
The campaign money, the campaign literature, the yard signs, the robo calls… they could not beat the voice of teachers and the voice of truth.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think our teachers are allowed to campaign for school board candidates. That’s like campaigning for your bosses, and most teachers do not live in the community, so they can’t even vote for them..
We had the 5th highest funded school board elections in our state—$100,000 and 2 existing board members up for election had over $30,000 each (there were 4 others running with much smaller bankrolls). They were largely funded by school unions and the hospital groups (one was a physician) and BLM. Money did not win. The union-backed lady probably could have won on a fraction of what she spent. She was a good candidate. 2 conservative candidates also won. The issues were masking and curriculum, communicating with the parents, gender issues and the power of the superintendent…not being wok
Conservatives talking about “gender issues”, in other words, they want the “freedom” to discriminate against women and the LGBTQ community. Conservatives talking about BLM, in other words, they want to discriminate against people of color. Conservatives talking about unions, in other words, they want to perpetuate the system that has led to the current egregious concentration of wealth. Conservatives talking about “wok”, in other words, they are unwilling or unable to process information that isn’t a Koch-written distortion. April massages the conservative talking points predictably.
Sollenberger wrote about the issue in Daily Beast, 11-8-2021. The usual people, Ryan Girdusky, Leonard Leo, Koch-connected people, etc. are identified. Next , conservatives will want to erect statues to Strom Thurmond, Derek Chauvin, Kyle Rittenhouse, Gov. Talmadge, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk.
“They were largely funded by school unions and the hospital groups . . . and BLM. Money did not win.”
I did a quick web search for news stories about funding for recent Wenatchee School Board elections in Washington state. These stories mentioned that three candidates had received donations from the Washington Education Association, the largest two of which were $1,500 each to different candidates. A third candidate received $1,000 from this organization.
Any documentation of your claim, Ms. Featherkite? Or is it simply a “retruth” (I’m borrowing, here, the unintentionally hilarious term to be used in Trump’s “Truth” Social) of a right-wing talking point from some message board? It appears that the candidate who raised the most money took in around $30,000. $1,500 is 5 percent of that, which means that her campaign was not “largely funded” by a teachers’ union. Could you clarify your claim and provide evidence to support it, April?
I also did not see “hospital groups” and “BLM” among the largest contributors.
And the largest contribution I did see was of $1,500.
Thanks for “shaming the devil”. Telling the truth is important.
Shaming wasn’t my intention. But I WAS interested in this. Where the money comes for in school board elections is a fascinating topic.
It would be interesting, and very different on the Education Carnival Midway, if school board elections actually WERE funded by teachers’ unions and BLM. Or if there actually were public schools that taught CRT. Or if there were a real tooth fairy. LOL.
I am reminded of he perennial charge that Diane Ravitch is “funded by the teachers’ unions.” It doesn’t matter, of course, that this is utterly false and OBVIOUSLY ludicrous, not in the age of Don the Con and “retruthing.”
Pro Publica has interesting info. about the lobbying of the Daschle Group and Stride Inc., F/K/A K12 Inc. And, so does LegiStorm.
Tsk, tsk, Bob. Don’t you know that pulling stuff out of your wazoo is the new gold standard for academic research?
I would have learned this if only I had taken a job at Fordham or AEI! But this failing of mine embarrassingly illustrates that I lack a graduate degree in Education from Harvard.
ditto Linda: they want the freedom to discriminate
👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽 This is indeed good news from Ohio. I taught 2nd/3rd grade combo class for Sylvania Public Schools.
Thank you, Dan Greenberg and teachers.
Have to tell my husband about this. He worked for the Toledo Public Schools. He will be happy; he was a union leader for the school where he taught.
We still care about the public schools in Ohio and read ‘news’ about what’s happening in Ohio. .
Most of the school news from Ohio is bad news because the legislature is determined to expand charters and vouchers.
This was a good article, I thought, about public schools and covid:
Unlike everything I’ve read about public schools and covid that comes out of the ed reform echo chamber it doesn’t begin with the premise that public schools have no value and should all be replaced. It’s a nuetral or even pro public school perspective- we see and read almost none of those. It’s good advice for people who support public schools and want to improve them.
Chiara, you have radar for good news! I was critical, reading this article, for what struck me as purely partisan pot-stirring. She exaggerates the stats on enrollment drop, claims Dems are “the party of public schools” and Reps devoted to what is in fact a fringe libertarian position– even though the vast majority of their kids attend public schools. However I totally missed what is essentially a pro-public-school viewpoint, she even closes with “repair the public schools, or watch people like Rufo destroy them” Good eye!
The Daily Beast has identified eight recently created anti-CRT groups which operate at local levels across the country but bear ties to ideological right-wing aristocrats and political operatives. Their backers include former officials in Donald Trump’s administration, an executive at a notorious D.C. lobbying firm, as well as Koch entities and The Federalist Society.
In Virginia, one of the key leaders against critical race theory is Ian Prior. If Prior’s name sounds familiar, that’s because you may have been one of the tens of thousands of Americans to receive emails from Prior in one of his many different former roles: press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Justice Department official during the Trump administration, communications director for the Karl Rove super PAC American Crossroads, and now, a GOP operative behind two organizations that have inflamed attacks on so-called critical race theory in Virginia’s public schools.
Prior runs Fight for Schools, a state-level PAC which emerged this year to challenge educational decisions in Loudoun County and mobilize behind Youngkin. The candidate turned to Prior’s group for fundraising and voter outreach efforts, and state election disclosures show that the organization raised hundreds of thousands of dollars during the campaign.
Fight for Schools—which this spring launched an effort to recall half a dozen Loudoun County school board members—also reported significant financial backing from 1776 Action, a “dark money” nonprofit led by former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson. The group also coordinated local events in Virginia with The Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank with connections to the Koch empire and Tea Party organizing efforts. And while Prior denies being present for the most controversial of those Loudoun County events—a June 22 protest that turned violent and ended with the arrests of two parents—that event was organized by another one of his groups, Parents Against Critical Theory.
PACT’s incorporation documents with the state of Virginia show Prior as its signatory, via his Parents Against Critical Theory LLC. However, he does not appear on the group’s website, which claims its founder is Scott Mineo, another Loudoun County parent who spoke at the June 22 protest. (Mineo has also reportedly posted anti-Black and anti-Muslim remarks on Facebook.) And, like Fight For Schools, PACT also received significant financial backing from Carson’s 1776 Action, and has coordinated events with the Heritage Foundation.
A separate group that recently launched a seven-figure anti-CRT ad campaign appears to be an arm of another conservative dark-money juggernaut.
According to Virginia state incorporation records, the group—the Free to Learn Coalition—appears connected to the Concord Fund, aka the Judicial Crisis Network, a nonprofit which has poured millions of dollars into efforts to stack the Supreme Court with conservatives. JCN is effectively controlled by Leonard Leo, a wealthy conservative activist and Federalist Society executive.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/right-wing-aristocrats-fund-critical-race-theory-backlash
Thanks for the info. BTW, Leo and William Barr received awards from a religious sect for what they’ve done to the country.
Fascinating, Ms. Irwin!
Here are some examples of the kind of teacher training Loudoun County paid $500k for, from an “equity consulting firm” called Equity Collaborative.
If this fellow is representative of the “training,” which isn’t about CRT, he provides an example of the extraordinarily low quality of the “professional development training” (Sit up. Roll over. Good boy) that I was subjected to as a teacher. However, see my note, below.
The use by the Equity Collaborative of the term Critical Race Theory:
I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
‘Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”, Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all’
Here’s a PowerPoint “Introduction to Critical Race Theory” by the Equity Collaborative, for a training session.
Click to access Intro-To-Critical-Race-Theory.pdf
Again, this firm has a $500,000 contract with Loudoun schools.
I don’t think The Equity Collaborative understands what CRT is.
Ofc, I don’t know from these clips what the rest of the “training” looks like. So this is just speculation.
Alas, I was very much afraid that some would pick up the term and misuse it and provide arguments to those on the right that want to stop progress toward a less systemically racist society. I’m interested in this, Flerp: Putting aside whether the bullet points on those slides actually describe Critical Race Theory, which of those points are you opposed to and why? That we should include in our instruction the stories of persons from various racial and ethnic backgrounds? How about the rest of those points?
This is the link, Flerp, that I think you meant to post, though I don’t know that this presentation was given as part of the Loudoun Co. training:
Click to access Intro-To-Critical-Race-Theory.pdf
I see. WordPress is not allowing one simply to post a LINK.
In Fairfax Co, their school board contracted with Panorama Education to the tune $1.8 million (?) to data mine students (for psychometrics). Panorama Ed staff get status as a “school official” to circumvent FERPA and parents are not allowed to refuse/opt-out of the surveys and questionnaires that will be given to their children. Panorama Ed is backed by Mark Zuckerberg (yeah, that guy who keeps getting in trouble over data issues!). The media made it sound like VA parents going crazy over CRT and kids faking trans to have sex in the bathroom, but it was more than that (although there are the extremists everywhere). Parents have issues with this DEI stuff and no one wants to listen or believe that it is happening. NOVA parents are educated, wealthy and tend to skew right fiscally, but they are very defensive of their public schools which are pretty decent.
LisaM,
The parents who are concerned with data mining are the ones who don’t want to ban Toni Morrison from all high school AP classes.
The parents who are concerned with data mining are also those who support that their children’s history curriculum has been expanded to include perspectives and information that the anti-CRT white parents believe have no place in any public school because it isn’t important to them.
I can’t recall a single time that flerp has posted that we need to stop data mining kids information — in fact, my recollection is that flerp approves of standardized tests although flerp is welcome to correct my assumption if flerp wants to go on record opposing data mining and standardized tests.
LisaM, I assume you agree with me that parents should be far more outraged that their schools are spending huge amounts of money to data mine their kids’ information and huge amounts of money to testing companies than they are about school systems spending a fraction of what they spend on data mining our kids on possibly silly professional development for teachers.
But the parents who agree with us did not vote for the Republican in Virginia because the ads they were seeing were about how parents needed to get Toni Morrison out of classrooms.
The parents in Virginia who are concerned with data mining did not vote for a right wing Republican promising to let Trump supporters control schools. Because they understood that when Youngkin meant “parents should control schools”, he was talking about CRT.
Let me just remind you NYC PSP….. NOVA turned Va into a blue state. Most of the parents who voted Youngkin for Gov. also voted for Biden.
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe
Sounds an awful lot like
“white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t as good as they thought they were. Arne Duncan
The parents in NOVA smelled a rat and tried to address the issues (and it’s NOT CRT!), but yet again, the Dems decided to give the middle finger to parents. It doesn’t work out well when they poke the momma bears. All this DEI, SEL and poor PD is just a load of horse crap and it’s not good for children and it’s a waste of time for teachers. But just keep on listening to MSM keeping this focused on the CRT wars.
LisaM,
I hope Joel Herman will post here to address your claim that “Most of the parents who voted Youngkin for Gov. also voted for Biden.” What proof do you have of that?
LisaM says:
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe”
LisaM, please read closely. McAuliffe said “WHAT TO TEACH”. McAuliffe did not say “I don’t think parents should be telling schools how their kids’ data should be used or telling their schools not to give their students lots of standardized testing.”
That’s why parents like flerp who believe very strongly in standardized testing are on your side. They know that having parents tell schools “what to teach” won’t endanger standardized testing.
That’s why Glenn Youngkin was very careful not to mention anything about parents telling schools not to have standardized tests or data mine.
That’s why the ads that ran non-stop weren’t about parents having a say about standardized testing or data mining, but about Trump supporting parents who want certain books banned from schools and want to tell schools WHAT TO TEACH. That’s subject matter. That’s why the ads were about Toni Morrison’s book Beloved. Not a parent crying about her child’s data was mined or the endless standardized testing.
There is a reason that Youngkin’s support was primarily parents who don’t have college degrees. Because those are the parents who are more likely to be concerned with WHAT TO TEACH. Not testing. Not data mining, but WHAT TO TEACH. The books. The history.
The far right pro-testing, pro-data mining billionaires who hate public schools and want white Trump supporters to tell schools WHAT TO TEACH say thank you, LisaM, for empowering them!
But please don’t insult most educated parents by claiming they were voting for Youngkin because they were deluded enough to believe that fighting to keep Toni Morrison and the 1619 project out of schools will somehow protect their kids’ data and lead to less testing.
But I do think that there were some privileged folks who were angry that all schools did not remain open during the height of the pandemic, and who were very angry about mask mandates and vaccine mandates. It’s hard for them to appreciate the lives saved because they haven’t experienced what happens in places where ignoring such mitigating practices put an enormous strain on health care. And they don’t live in the communities most affected when health care has to be rationed.
So yes, every privileged parent angry that, during the height of the pandemic, their kid had to go to school remotely instead of being forced into an overcrowded, poorly ventilated school where no one had to wear masks or be vaccinated may have voted for Youngkin. But not sure there were too many of them, and most likely those were the ones who also are strong supporters of standardized testing, like flerp, and knew that empowering Youngkin won’t affect the testing they support.
LisaM
You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts.
Parents did not vote for Biden and then vote for Trump light. Youngkin received 85% of the voters who voted for Trump in 2020. In a Presidential level turn out after one of the highest turn out elections in many many decades. While Mcauliffe beat Northam’s 2017 turn out,he only received 66% of voters who voted for Biden in 2020.
That 19 point difference alone leaves very little room for crossover voters .
It is a nice fantasy but the reality is that the BASKET of TRASH was making up for not being able to steal an election and end the American experiment. They could care less about their children’s public schools.
Regardless of whatever fantasy the media wants to manufacture .
It was always about the hate. Including the attack on Transgender students and the bathroom policy that was not in effect yet. An ad rivaling the Atomic bomb commercial in 64 race, idyllic little girl and all . That ad neglected to mention that the rape occurred after several consensual sexual episodes in the girls bathroom . But if the arrested father who threatened other parents at a school board meeting before he went on National TV don’t care about the emotional effect on his daughter; “Ask me if i care. ”
I question how much classroom time was ever spent on discussing racial issues. As significant as the issue of slavery and race is to American history and current events . How many hours are devoted to discussing it ,in any grade. And how does that compare to the total. .
If the Right is bent out of shape by Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” can the vast majority of the Trumpanzees name another book they object to.
How much time was devoted to discussing a 324 page book in that AP class. In any class, a week, a month.
In my 1967 sophomore English class we read Black Boy by Richard Wright. Must have been a lot of “Woke” socialists infiltrating our schools back then. Sorry to attack your fragility.
Joel Herman,
Thank you! I was really hoping you would respond.
“You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts.”
Yep.
Flerp
What to do with you. Wow i know you are impressed by big numbers . I have been asking you to tell us exactly how big the Racial equity industry is . And how that compares to the Right wing noise machine funded by the Kochs and other oligarchs.
Well you finally came up with a very big number. The Loudoun County school board spent 500k on the video you posted . I am assuming there is probably a bit more.
But chew on this for a while :
The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has approved a budget totaling approximately $3.3 billion in total appropriations for the general county government and school system for Fiscal Year (FY) 2022.Apr 6, 2021
Converting that to a percentage really would not do justice. It is 1/6,600 of their budget . You have any more numbers
LisaM
The two individuals (and, their affiliations) who secured school choice legislation in Indiana, self-identify in an article, “An Insider’s Look at the Evolution of the Choice …Program.” (4-22-2021, Southwestern Indiana Catholic Community Newsletter) The article is part of a series commemorating the 10 year anniversary of school choice in the state.
Joel,
Good post, but flerp did succeed in doing his usual thing of posting entirely deceptive videos, power point presentations and comments to get readers of Diane Raavitch’s blog to believe something that isn’t true, while then reserving the right to declare himself a victim when called out on it because he denies that his deliberately posting deceptive comments was an intent to deceive. It is exactly what makes people dislike lawyers, even though most lawyers are interested in arguing the facts, not in deceiving folks so they will believe something that is not true.
Joel said: “Well you finally came up with a very big number. The Loudoun County school board spent 500k on the video you posted…”
Do we have any idea what the 500K was spent on? Easy to miss at the bottom of flerp posting that video, flerp says “Again, this firm has a $500,000 contract with Loudoun schools.” As Bob Shepherd mentioned in passing, we don’t even know if the power point presentation flerp posted has anything to do with that contract.
What flerp (no doubt by accident) didn’t mention is that Loudon County has been one of the fastest diversifying districts. In 1995, they had a largely white student body of 20,000. By 2020, there were more than 81,000 students and 60% were Black, Hispanic or Asian.
What flerp also didn’t mention is that in 2019 there were allegations that African American students in LCPS were being denied equal oppoartunity to participate in a programs called “Academies of Loudoun.”
“In 2019, the Equity Collaborative was contracted to conduct a study of equity throughout the district. The study documented individual instances of offensive behavior, noted differences in academic performance, found a low level of racial literacy among faculty and staff, and drew the overall conclusion that systemic racism existed throughout the school system.In response to these findings, the School Board formed an Equity Committee to dive deeper into the concerns and installed equity specialists in every school.
The report “helped us understand that the school system needed to change to address all students’ needs,” Ziegler said. “Students who came to school expecting a safe and affirming environment setting them up to learn were experiencing racial and cultural insensitivity, and our staff was trained in how to handle it.”
There are white parents who believe that because the school system works fine for them and they are definitely not racist, those who find racist content in history books or racist illustrations in children’s books should be marginalized, because white people who aren’t racist say that it isn’t racist.
But the majority of college educated folks who are white don’t have that knee jerk reaction and also don’t try to post deceptive comments in an attempt to demonize what is a perfectly reasonable expenditure of money. One can argue that Loudoun County should have only spent $100,000 on this. Or one can look at the SPECIFIC materials or staff or report that money bought instead of trying to deceive readers into believing it was for this power point.
But the idea that spending $6 per student in a single year on addressing problems that arise when a school system changes from nearly all students being white to 60% of the students being non-white must be stopped?
When someone posts a provocative video that deceives readers but denies they posted it to deceive readers, then why did they post it? Because they don’t like diversity programs themselves and want to convince people to agree with them by deceiving them?
Joel, I hope you get a reply to your questions. I will never understand why people try to foment hate and division by posting misleading videos but I do think we all have the duty to call it out when they do.
Fight For Schools has now announced it is paying for parents to circulate petitions required for removal of multiple board members in London County Virginia. Same mentality and mechanism powering and paying for the January 6 Insurrection.
Fight For Schools is a HATE group. Turn off the financial spigot.
The Loudoun County School Board meeting erupted into shouting on Tuesday 11/9/2021 night after parents confronted members of the school board after the parent group Fight for Schools filed more than 2,000 signatures to remove the board chair.
“By the way, Denise, Brenda, Ian, Atoosa, we are well over 100% of required signatures for the petitions,” Megan Jenkins said during the public comment period. “So I’m not going to encourage any of you to resign because when you are recalled and removed from office, it will be much more satisfying. See you in court.”
Erin Dunbar accused the school board of spending taxpayer money to inculcate “critical theory of the Marxist philosophy.”
“You have activist teachers using to indoctrinate their kids who are at the mercy of their authority,” she said. “That is child abuse. And you have no right to brainwash children into believing that their skin color determines their purpose.”
The petition effort began earlier this year, after reports emerged that members of a Facebook group called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” had compiled a list of outspoken conservatives and opponents of critical race theory in order to track, hack and “doxx” them.
foxnews.com
Winning one battle doesn’t mean we won the war. The corrupt, power-hungry, greedy monsters with the goal to destroy democratically elected school boards and public school districts in the United States will be back again and again, and again.
The privatizers of everything public, even our state and federal governments, have already been at it for decades since the late 1960s or early 1970s with long-term goals that reach far into the future and very deep pockets.
These parasites have controlled the education policies for every president since Nixon and/or Reagan, and it doesn’t matter what party those presidents belonged to. These vampires have also continued to increase their numbers in both Houses of Congress, state legislatures, and in elected school boards across the country.
He lost me at the bow tie.
Bow tie is always a red flag.
Add GOP clerical collars as red flags
Congrats, Flerp. You found a confused person on the Internet!!! Quite an achievement.
And proof, ofc, of the vast, ubiquitous, tentacled Great Critical Race Theory Conspiracy in public schools!
This is a great service you are providing here, Flerp. So few people seem to understand that Critical Race Theory is behind dandelions on the lawn and termite infestations, for example, or that it turns kids transgender and makes perfectly nice white supremacists into villains.
In short response to your question in your other comment Bob — I don’t have much time (I’m on a deadline and shouldn’t be commenting here anyway!), but I would say this:
— As a general matter, I am not sympathetic or interested in discussions that assume a universal interest in “furthering equity,” as “equity,” in my experience, is a term used to justify deep, structural changes that do not benefit me or my family and that I believe are harmful to society as a whole, ranging from identity-based hiring decisions (which include outright race-based discrimination), the elimination of advanced coursework in schools, the elimination of standardized testing in favor of “soft criteria” that are easily exploited by the wealthy, and whole bunch of other policies that place group interests over the interests of individuals. Yes, I realize this is an outlier position on this web site, and I assume I will be skewered for it. But that’s ok.
— I don’t like the notion of “challenging biases” because it almost always is a reference to implicit bias, which I believe is nonsense science with unfalsifiable premises and with no predictive value about actual bias in practice.
— I don’t like being asked to “set aside my identity to make room for someone else.” I don’t even know what it means to “set aside my identity.” To me, one’s identity is among the most important things one has. So, no, I don’t want to get out of the way to make room for others. I want to participate in systems with rules that are the same for everyone, regardless of their “identity.”
— I don’t like the notion of “the role of race and racism in perpetuating social disparities between dominant and marginalized racial groups,” because I’ve listened to enough of this kind of thing to know that that means that “every social disparity among groups is attributable to group identity.” The analysis is simplistic and sloppy and divisive, in my opinion.
— “counter-storytelling” is theoretically fine — who wouldn’t want to hear stories from different perspectives? As a practical matter, though, time is limited, so “counter-storytelling” can become a blunt tool for canon-revision.
— the “permanence of racism” — This seems like an inherently flawed concept but I’d have to hear the details to say more.
— “Whiteness as Property” is just another legal-sounding reformulation of the central premise that U.S. society favors whites and gives them unfair rights of access blah blah. One can debate that premise, which I think is not always true. But I’m not interested in a pseudo-legal discussion of a simple concept like that. Because “whiteness” is not a property right under any reasonable construction.
— “Critique of Liberalism” I definitely do not like. CRT has a deep hostility to liberalism and basic enlightenment values, including the system of individual legal rights and the civil rights-era principle of equality under the law. Call me a codger but I’ll stand up for that principle every time.
To speak bluntly, I think this is horsesh!t professional development that is nothing more than a new human resources industry and a bureaucratic grift. I don’t think it’s harmless–to the contrary, I think it’s divisive and corrosive and turns everything it touches to sh!t. I know the usual suspect(s) will just accuse me of white privilege and white fragility, but I am very far beyond caring. And I don’t expect to convince anyone here about anything. Ok, I’ve burned too much time on this.
Good luck meeting your deadline.
“I don’t think this” and “I don’t think that” and “I don’t think this”
That isn’t an argument. It is simply a good example of why this kind of training is important (yet probably useless for many people).
“I don’t think it matters if we call females girls or women” “I don’t think it matters if we use Ms. or Miss when addressing a grown woman.” “I don’t think it matters if I tell a sexist joke in the office”.
“Nothing that Joy Hakim has in History of US bothers me and since I’m not racist, it should not bother anyone else.” “I think Billy Crystal in blackface is funny, and I’m not racist, so anyone who says that it is racist should be demeaned and ignored”.
I truly don’t understand it when I see the over the top defensiveness of people when asked to think about these things.
I can admit I have implicit biases. I am interested when someone points them out to me and I have had my teenager point them out to me, and like flerp I reacted badly knowing I was absolutely certainly right, until I actually stopped making this about me and how I am always right and started thinking about other people’s perspective.
Who are the snowflakes? The ones who are so sensitive that if told they are wrong, the only thing they want to do is attack. Not have a discussion about it that could lead to the other person conceding their point, but also could lead to them getting a little bit “woke”. Oh, the horror!
I do agree that the science behind implicit bias theory is sketchy but not, ofc, that implicit bias doesn’t exist, for ofc it does. That it does is simply a consequence of the fact that most of what we act upon in the world is not explicitly, overtly learned but rather acquired via unconscious enculturation. That’s how humans work, and this difference between overt learning and passive acquisition is something every prospective teacher should learn in a class on learning science, as they should learn about the differences between diagnostic, formative, and summative testing. Alas, it’s not a distinction that is widely taught. Again, I agree that there is a lot of totally useless “professional development.” The rule for judging this stuff should always be, does the participant walk away having learned anything concrete and useful that he or she did not know before? Almost all of it, in my experience, fails that test.
The constant interruption of threads by content moderation on WP is really getting to be annoying.
I just tried to leave a comment about an important but rarely discussed distinction in pedagogical theory, and it was blocked for no reason. No mention of the last name of a certain Supreme court justice or a certain president.
flerp has posted strong criticism of the 1619 project being any part of public education, which puts him squarely on the side of those who believe that the only history that is important to teach in public school is the history that white people say is important.
flerp was critical of taking Dr. Seuss books out of classrooms – the fact that the ones that would be taken out are no longer popular and have anti-Asian imagery and references is not as important as parents right to have their young elementary school students presented with that imagery in a way that reinforces that it is completely acceptable. Because otherwise “censorship”.
For the last year, flerp has posted tweets from right wing Trump supporters that link to videos of educators talking about diversity and race. Anyone watching the entirety of those videos would find them perfectly fine but flerp’s posts are the right winger’s out of context presentation, in which they demonize those educators in a way designed to get people to hate them and often make threats against them.
Whatever right wing talking point about CRT or diversity training is going around the internet is often posted here by flerp.
I find it shocking that flerp is outraged when white supremacists are made into villains but likes to amplify posts where concerned educators trying to do perfectly good things are.
Do you know that this week flerp posted a link to a private school diversity conference in which flerp tried to turn a young black kindergarten teacher at a private school into a laughing stock because of the description of one of the workshops she was leading?
I don’t understand people trying to foment hate against perfectly nice people who are doing nothing wrong except leading a workshop that white people believe has no value.
I’d rather waste a little money for a teacher to attend one of these supposedly silly CRT workshops than waste it on the things that flerp finds important — lots of testing and measuring “learning loss”.
I am waiting for flerp to explain to parents the great harm that he believes that white children suffer when their teachers attend these workshops.
You could publish an 8-volume set of “Thoughts on Flerp,” you write about me so much here.
In the event I haven’t been clear before, your reply, like everything you type here, is dishonest, stupid, and annoying. And I will never give you a substantive response, as engaging you changes no minds and is the typing equivalent of sinking into quicksand or being spaghettified by a black hole.
Flerp
November 7, 2021 at 3:46 pm
Ponderosa, here’s a training from the National Association of Independent Schools that looks great for kindergarten teachers! It’s called “Small Activists, Big Impact: Cultivating Anti-Racists and Activists in Kindergarten”
The summary:
“In the current climate, it is especially important and necessary to delve into social justice with some of the smallest learners. This workshop aims to expose, offer, and create a new lens for teaching social justice to kindergarten students. Learn how to begin teaching social justice in your classroom, incorporate books and vocabulary into lessons, and discuss the “-isms” with your students. Expect to leave with examples of practical lessons to use in the classroom as well as long-term projects to culminate at the end of the year. Get a roadmap to take your anti-bias and anti-racist teaching to the next level.”
https://pocc.nais.org//Workshops
When I went to this link that flerp posted to demonize yet another educator, I found a private school Kindergarten teacher who is also the Coordinator of Diversity and Inclusivity who was offering a program to other Kindergarten teachers that is likely perfectly fine, despite flerp’s hope that we will all agree with him that she’s a total idiot who should be the object of ridicule.
The teacher who is offering this training that flerp believes should be an object of ridicule isn’t white. And just maybe she and the other teachers who are interested in participating in this workshop feel like they might get something out of it.
No doubt that white teachers who are as non-racist as flerp would spend the whole time making fun of this kindergarten teacher’s useless (to them) perspective.
My reply is being held up, so not sure if it will eventually post.
I wanted readers to see an earlier flerp post from 2 days ago linking to a workshop being given by a black private school Kindergarten teacher for other private school Kindergarten teachers. Apparently we were supposed to find it just as objectionable as flerp did.
Anyone can peruse the internet to find some seminar about teaching math or reading or history or citizenship with a laughable description. But that is a pretty lousy argument for saying any professional development in those subjects is useless.
Or if it is all useless, then why are unions making part of their contracts?
A good example of what implicit racism is: White folks who hold professional development about diversity teaching to standards of perfection that they never hold other professional development to. You don’t see those white people trying to end all math education by presenting an example of a math professional training program that seems silly.
What they might do is criticize that specific math program and talk about other math programs that are much better.
So let’s stipulate that flerp can come up with other examples to make fun of. The real issue is that if you start out believing that implicit bias does not exist, or that math is a worthless subject, you can come up with all kinds of irrelevant examples of a time when a math program was stupid or a diversity program looked silly.
Probably if I asserted that I had no bias against math, but I spent all my time ranting that the teaching of math was unnecessary and look at this example of a very stupid math question which proves how unnecessary math education is, my disingenuous claim that I had absolutely no bias against math would not be believed by anyone.
^^And I bet that the private school kindergarten teacher whose workshop for other private school kindergarten teachers flerp dismisses as being completely worthless (or perhaps dangerous) is a pretty good Kindergarten teacher. And banning such workshops because a white critic ridicules it is a bad idea.
flerp says: “I don’t like the notion of “challenging biases” because it almost always is a reference to implicit bias, which I believe is nonsense science with unfalsifiable premises and with no predictive value about actual bias in practice.”
Implicit bias is not “science”. flerp seems to believe that all other biases are “science” (does flerp believe that bias only exists if it can be scientifically measured?) but since implicit bias can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist.
Are there law schools that teach lawyers that unless bias can be scientific measured, it doesn’t exist?
Are there law schools that teach lawyers that bias doesn’t exist unless someone can offer up an irrefutable “predictive value” about it in practice?
If anything demonstrates implicit bias, it is the double standard where things that white folks believe are important never have to meet a scientifically agreed upon standard to justify their importance. Those things are simply important because white folks say they are. Like Calculus in high school, even though 80% of the students who take it (which is a small group to begin with) never take a higher level Calculus class in college.
I believe only a white person could go through life believing with every fiber of his being that anyone who says they aren’t racist and believes they have no racist beliefs should never have to participate in any workshops that might challenge their certainty that there isn’t a racist bone in their body. After all, since they aren’t racist, anything they believe is, by definition, not-racist. Sure there is no science to back that up, but only things that white people don’t like require scientific evidence. The things they like just are good because white people say they are good.
Every one of these questions are so inane that they cannot be answered. Go type more words in another reply.
I’m sorry that I lack the brilliance of your insight in which you claim that implicit bias can’t be acknowledged to exist because the effects of it can’t be scientifically measured.
What do you call it when black students are suspended more frequently than white students FOR THE SAME ACTIONS?
What do you call it when police aggressively manhandle black drivers differently than they do white drivers?
What do you call it when a white teacher who “isn’t racist” decides that he will continue to use Joy Hakim’s History of US just like he always has because the passages that bother other people don’t bother him?
Just bad luck?
It would be great to simply hear your countering points. It’s hard to even decipher them, because they’re subsidiary to characterizing the other party negatively due to the position they’ve stated. Which is the definition of “ad hominem.”
bethree5,
Not sure if you are talking to me. I can’t refute that there is no “science” that can measure implicit bias just like I can’t refute that there is no “science” that can measure explicit bias. Can anyone?
I am interested in conversations about whether it is important to help educators think about implicit biases they may have and how that might be done. And I’m interested in conversations about how to address problematic content in classroom books and resources that are now dated, especially if those books are beloved by some who don’t think a few (or more than a few) uncomfortably biased passages are a big deal.
I’m not interested in debating the merits of a random diversity workshop for private school kindergarten teachers based on a few sentences. So not sure what the motive would be of anyone who frequently posts links to a single diversity workshop or to a random slideshow about CRT.
But it would not surprise me if it is the same motive that Campbell Brown has when she cites random stories of union teachers who are sexual predators.
If questioning Campbell Brown’s motives when she cites stories of bad teachers qualifies as an ad hominem attack, then guilty as charged.
Oops — meant this for the thread about the video above. Guess I didn’t learn everything from the internet!😜
LisaM — and of course you know who’s the father-in-law of Xan Tanner, the founder of Panorama Education. What are the odds?
I do know that!….but I would really be skewered for posting that fact. I have no problem with the father-in-law and would have been happy to have him sit on SCOTUS.
flerp,
What are the odds that Xan Tanner’s own mother – not an in-law – is a trustee of Bryn Mawr College?
Can you use that fact to post some nasty innuendo about Panorama Education and the “feminist agenda” or maybe “lesbian agenda” being forced on public schools?
So, what’s behind Garland’s hands-off approach to the Don, Cheeto “Littlefingers” Trumpbalone? Aka Don the Con? Any notions? It’s not as if, like Meyer Lansky, he rendered some service that would, conceivably, in some minds, earn him protection. Curiouser and curiouser
I don’t know, Bob, I haven’t really been focused on it for a while. I would guess he’s reluctant to get the Justice Department into a criminal investigation of a former president, for all the obvious reasons. My own preference would be to not have the DOJ go after Trump. I really want to move past Trump as soon as possible.
Yeah, I’m thinking along these lines too. Opens a can of worms, each successive administration going full throttle after the previous one. It already seems to me that anyone would have to be crazy to want this job, given that everything one has ever done and everyone one has ever known or cared about will be subjected to detailed scrutiny, some of it extremely invasive.
Bob,
I hope you notice the right wing framing here. This is how propaganda works.
Merrick Garland’s DOJ is not “going after” Trump. That’s propaganda. Garland’s DOJ is investigating crimes and corruption that happened when Trump was using his power to overturn an election. Anyone who holds the position that Garland’s DOJ needs to “move on” and stop investigating the crimes and corruption of Trump’s White House and associates is repeating right wing talking points. The few ethical Republicans left in Congress are not spewing that propaganda to “move on”. Neither are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse, Tammy Baldwin, Amy Klobuchar. The Justice Department has been investigating the supposed Steele dossier “crimes” for years! It’s been 10 months since an insurrection that nearly brought down democracy — and the right wing is chomping at the bit for their “move on” propaganda to take hold so that they can then replace it with the propaganda of “see, Trump did nothing wrong”.
Can you imagine any real American patriot who wants to normalize a losing White House fomenting an insurrection in which the VP who is supposed to be certifying a presidential election is cowering away from a violent crowd and receiving threatening communication from the losing Presidents “team” that – sounding like mafia don’s guys – leans on him to do the right thing and maybe he won’t get hurt?
“Move on” is a propaganda tool that is a single message: “Nothing to see here. Nothing happened that was wrong.”
Anyone seeing John Durham “moving on”? And Durham doesn’t have a crime to investigate — he’s been busy looking for someone to charge for a supposed “crime” that no one even knew was a crime for years. Lazily copy and paste in a renewal for a wiretap for someone who the president himself has public stated has never been a part of his campaign nearly a year after the campaign is over? Years later, someone finds that mistake and declares that renewing the wiretap of the guy who had nothing to do with the Trump campaign long after the campaign ended is a wiretap on Trump! And suddenly the same guy who had nothing to do with the Trump campaign has morphed into a vital Trump associate. THAT is how you “go after” Democrats. You find some crime that no one even considers a crime and charge him for it.
The Trump investigations aren’t about finding a crime. They are about INVESTIGATING who participated in a crime that happened. You don’t “move on” from that.
Except you do if you are one of those folks who Trump cited when he explained that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would be fine.
No doubt they would say “move on”.
I am giving Merrick Garland the benefit of the doubt that it’s taking so long not because he believes in “moving on” when a president shoots someone on fifth avenue or foments an insurrection so his VP feels threatened enough to declare him the winner of an election he lost. I believe Garland is taking so long because he isn’t politicizing this, he is investigating a serious crime that unfolded before our eyes and wants to properly prosecute the people involved.
It’s hard for me to believe that any ethical lawyer’s legal opinion is that there shouldn’t be an investigation because what the Trump White House did should be a model for all presidents who lose re-elections because there was nothing improper going on. That’s not just letting Trump shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, it’s an end to our democracy.
My issue was/is that Garland has NOT aggressively gone after Trump but has seemed to go out of his way to avoid doing so.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/06/09/ag-garland-defends-dojs-support-for-trump-in-defamation-case-despite-strongly-disagreeing-with-ex-president/?sh=854924621742
https://cepr.net/why-is-merrick-garland-defending-donald-trump/
Bob,
I must have misunderstood your comment — I thought when you cited “opening a can of worms” and “each successive administration going full throttle after the previous one”, you were agreeing with the previous reply by someone who did not want the DOJ to “go after” Trump and wanted to “move past” Trump.
If you agree with me that the DOJ needs to fully investigate what happened and you aren’t minimizing a sitting (but defeated) president’s attempt to overturn an election via a violent coup by mischaracterizing it as something unimportant that we should “move past”, then I’m relieved. It would be tragic for our country if rational people start amplifying the right wing propaganda that an investigation into an insurrection that was a danger to our democracy is just the partisan Democratic DOJ “going after” Trump.
We already know that too many rabid Trump supporters already embrace that false narrative and their minds will never be changed. But the rest of us can’t let their absolute certainty that up is down and the earth is flat and the election was stolen and violence is okay when your guy loses make us question reality.
I read your links and I do worry that Garland might buy into the narrative that the far right is pushing — that we need to “move past” this and not investigate it fully. And if Garland is just another Mueller who highly values praise from conservative pundits about how “fair” he is, and acts primarily to insure that no investigation compromises his goal of getting that conservative pundit praise, then he needs to go, stat. Those articles didn’t quite convince me that getting the praise he craves from conservative pundits is his endgame. I certainly hope it isn’t.
And I certainly hope that Garland doesn’t listen to those who inexplicably believe that the way to “move past” a popular sociopath who held enormous unchecked power and used it corruptly is to not investigate his most dangerous actions so he can continue to amass followers and gain that unchecked power back. That’s not “moving past” Trump. It’s enabling and empowering Trump. I suspect the far right hopes we are dumb enough to fall for it. I hope those of us who believe in democracy show them we aren’t.
The man incited an insurrection and attempted to overthrow a democratic election. That’s treason.
Ofc, when I refer to Trump as a man, I am using the term very loosely.
Letting Don the Con off the hook for these grave attempts to overthrow the American democratic system sets a horrific precedent.
Or, as Trump would put it, “a bad, really bad, you have no idea how bad that president is. OK? It’s ‘unpresidented.'”
Bob,
Yep, I agree.
The Watergate criminals were arrested breaking into the DNC offices in June, 1972. Nixon’s political hacks call it a 3rd rate burglary and Nixon denied any involvement with the White House.
At the equivalent stage – 10 months later – there had been some arrests and convictions for the burglary itself and White House officials like Haldeman and Erlichman resign and John Dean gets fired.
How many right wing hacks were pushing that “time to move past” and “don’t go after Nixon” narrative 11 months after the Watergate burglary, when the live hearings were to begin? Just imagine if Republicans back then had embraced the same neo-fascist, anti-democratic goals and their followers were pushing “time to move past this” and characterizing a continuation of the investigation as “going after” the president?
Those far right voices, thankfully, were marginalized. Almost a year after the break-in, after the convictions for the burglary itself and White House resignations and firing, the Senate begin their hearings.
Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee wasn’t like today’s Republicans. Baker made it clear that the investigation as to “What did the president know and when did he know it” wasn’t about “going after” Nixon as today’s right wing hacks keep claiming. It was about insuring that democracy continued.
As Howard Baker knew, “moving past” lawbreaking presidents isn’t achieved by pushing the narrative that holding their White House to account is achieved by mischaracterizing an investigation of their wrongdoing as “going after” them. Howard Baker knew that “moving past” this means doing a thorough investigation.
And 2 years after the burglary, in 1974, Nixon was still obstructing the investigation while no doubt some of his hacks were shouting that the country needed to move on. Thank goodness there were Republicans and Democrats with integrity and courage who understood that moving on didn’t mean to stop investigating.
It always bothered me that the Clinton impeachment was used as a false equivalency dog whistle because it was the exact opposite of the Watergate (and Trump White House) investigations.
A special prosecutor from the opposing party, Republican Robert Fiske couldn’t find crimes against “Whitewater.”
And since Robert Fiske found nothing wrong, a panel of right wing judges appointed Ken Starr, right wing hack, to keep digging. For years. And years. And years. And unlike Nixon, Clinton just let the investigation happen.
With Trump, a special prosecutor from the SAME party, Republican Robert Mueller, was given less than 2 years, and it was in reaction to specific wrongdoing — the president inviting the FBI director into a private meeting and making him an offer he couldn’t refuse – ending an investigation into his friend. When the FBI director did refuse, he was fired. There was a serious breach of power that had to be investigated with Trump; it was the opposite of an endless fishing expedition to come up with something – anything – to “get” the president and finding an extramarital affair.
It’s ironic — and tragic — that politicians who know they did nothing wrong don’t object to years long investigations by partisan hacks because they don’t expect that investigation to go on indefinitely until a prosecutor can find some mistake or dirt he can imply was nefarious criminal activity.
While the ones who commit crimes right in front of us get their right wing hacks to spread the message that any investigation into what they did is not allowed, and refuse to cooperate even when those investigations are done by members of their own party.
As I say, Republican Howard Baker understood. And our country is fortunate that the “move past” propaganda purveyors were presented as the political hacks they were and marginalized. In today’s so-called liberal media, the story would be:
“Republicans are very concerned about the partisan Democrats’ attempts to get Nixon when the country needs them to move along. Democrats disagree. One Republican, Howard Baker, says he has no idea what Nixon knew or when he knew it, and Nixon’s defenders don’t understand why Baker is spending his time trying to get Nixon and won’t do anything about the problems our country is facing.”
Right wing framing.
I wish there were a way to formally disavow the word “woke”. It’s a stereotype concocted by the so-called centrists.
right wing propaganda got “woke” to be pejorative term
right wing propaganda got “liberal” to be a pejorative term
right wing propaganda got “union” to be a pejorative term
Not sure how to change that, but I think one of the problems is when instead of shutting this down and simply defending those words, too many of the people who defend them begin by conceding the far right’s main point: “I know unions can be very self-serving and their members very lazy, but….” and saying “I know many woke people want to control everything people say, but….”
The right loves it when they get defenders to legitimize all the negative stereotypes associated with those words before they defend them.
I wish there was a way to disavow everything that the right wing uses to destroy progressives but even if we start saying “teachers groups” instead of “unions” (because the right has turned teacher union into a stereotype), there is still going to be a concerted effort to demonize whatever term is used.
I am glad that feminists didn’t decide to formally disavow the word “Ms” and “feminist” just because the right was making a huge effort to propagandize Americans into associating those words with an ugly stereotype that wasn’t true.
Woke has gone the same way as “identity politics,” it can’t be saved.
Rather than disavow the term, we should disavow the more ridiculous practices that go on in schools that get categorized as wokeness. For example, teaching kindergarten students that it is important for them to be aware of their race and the race of other students. Or teaching elementary students that this country is deeply racist and some races of people are at systematic disadvantages. Or teachers who believe teaching is a form of political activism. We should reject this kind of stuff. The more we reject it, the more it hollows out the term “woke.” Refusing to reject it (either because we deny it’s happening, or because we actually support these things) is what gives the term it’s pejorative power.
I say that we do what the Puritans did. The term was invented as a pejorative, and they embraced it. My fav among these is the term “Socialist,” which means precisely nothing when used by the American right except for a general term for whatever is hated.
White man: “A peculiar thing happened to me here last night. The equivalent of 20 years on the psychiatrist’s couch. I discovered something about myself. I found out I’m a racist. Oh, not the obvious, out in the open kind of racist, not me. No, I was a sneaky racist. I was so sneaky I didn’t even know it myself.”
Black man: “A very smart man said “to adequately define the problem is the first step toward solving it.”
White man: “Well, I’ve defined it”.
That’s not from some “too woke” professional development that a private school Kindergarten teacher, who happens to be black, wants to share with her colleagues at a diversity workshop whose description greatly offends the sensibilities of a certain poster on this blog.
It’s from the 1970 Christmas episode of the sitcom “Bewitched”.
The ideas that inform what is racist and not racist change over time. There are parts of this 1970 episode that are very offensive. But the idea that white people who don’t think they are racist and say that they are not racist can still be racist — that’s not a new concept.
“Woke” is the idea that many of us are asleep and unaware of our implicit racism. That idea is not new, but that idea has always been attacked by the right wing who use their power to shut down any discussion of it and demonize it. Police say that they aren’t policing in a racist matter, and that means the matter is closed.
We can buy into the demonization of “woke” just like cowardly Democrats in the late 1980s helped legitimize and amplify the right wing’s demonization of the word “liberal” by running away as fast as they could from it. Why do we help amplify and legitimize this? Do you realize what “disavowing woke” means? That’s what the Republicans want. Because it means that anytime they don’t like something the Democrats want, they just call it “woke”, and instead of a discussion of the policy being good or bad, the media makes the issue about whether the Democrats are lying or not lying when they disavow the “wokeness” in their policy.
We should be doing what Diane Ravitch does and make it clear that there is nothing wrong with the word “woke” just because the Republicans say there is. There was nothing wrong with the word “liberal”. But because the Dems played right into the plan to demonize that word, the Republicans got the policy “debates” they wanted — are the Dems lying about the policy being liberal or are the Dems telling the truth that their policy isn’t liberal? That was a recipe in turning off voters from the left, moderates and conservatives! Are the Dems lying or not? Is the policy “woke” or “not woke”. If the word “woke” isn’t demonized, that irrelevant and distracting question would not even be asked, let alone be the main story.
“If you agree with me…then I’m relieved.”
The major premiss, of my pretenses of control
and management, is the commutation of conditionals.
If a repub said “that” then those who say “that”
are repubs.
The “wronger” I define repubs, the “righter” I
define myself.
The more brilliant my arguments seem to me,
the more vague “other” arguments become.
The more I play “Mary the mindreader”
(I know what they’re thinking and what
they know) the more I can reveal the
future.
The more I associate opposition to the
approved narratives of electoral
“saviors” as blasphemy, the greater the
chance of redemption.
AND
He can’t be a man ’cause he
doesn’t smoke the same language as
me…
NoBrick,
LOVE the ellipses!!
“If you agree with me that the DOJ needs to fully investigate what happened and you aren’t minimizing a sitting (but defeated) president’s attempt to overturn an election via a violent coup by mischaracterizing it as something unimportant that we should “move past”, then I’m relieved.”
Clearly that statement offends your sensitive constitution.
I found your post to be incomprehensible, especially when you wrote:
“The major premiss…. I can reveal the future….the greater the chance of redemption.”
The more I play “Mary the mindreader”
(I know what they’re thinking and what
they know)…
“Clearly that statement offends your
sensitive constitution.”
The more brilliant my arguments seem to me,
the more vague “other” arguments become.
“I found your post to be incomprehensible…”
Awesome!
Don’t know if this video will post or if anyone will read this far, but just in case…
flerp posted a link to a power point that includes a very funny Key and Peele sketch relating to education. I had seen this sketch a long while back and thought it was brilliant.
Ha,ha,ha…L❤️VE this one!!
We all, after all is said & done, REALLY need one, don’t we?